Taras Kuzio
In the last few years, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has increasingly espoused moving Armenia away from Russia and towards the European Union (EU.) And yet, since 2022, Armenia has increased its economic and trade dependency on Russia.
The first step, European integration, is contradicted by the second step, growing reliance on Russia. For a multi-vector foreign policy, it seems curiously mono-dimensional.
Armenia’s contradictory foreign policy is abetted by Russia on the one hand and the US and EU on the other. Russia’s strategic interest has always been to increase the integration of former Soviet republics as much as possible towards strengthening its sphere of influence in Eurasia.
The US and EU treat Armenia differently than Belarus. The two turn a blind eye to Armenia’s massive involvement in the re-export of Western goods to Russia, which Yerevan continues to obfuscate through diplomatic discourse. (Armenia-Russia trade tripled in 2022 and doubled again in the first eight months of 2023 as it became a very large backdoor for sanctioned Western goods.) Meanwhile, the West punishes Belarus for openly assisting Russia in evading sanctions.
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